Tag Archives: training

Some tips to reduce mould in your house

Health, housing, renewable energy, ,

In the interests of networking, an important part of resilience, I keep in touch with Green Wedmore. This is an active and effective community group out on the Levels. When I discovered they were involved with a plan to conduct an energy survey of the area, I was keen to join in. I’d qualified as an energy assessor some years ago, but the project which sponsored me fell through before I got any practical experience.

Last Saturday, we had an Energy Essentials Training day, presented by the lovely Lisa Evans of the Centre for Sustainable Energy in Bristol. Although I found a lot of the material familiar, it reminded me how important this information is to people.

Cold and damp are bad enough, but it’s the resulting mould that’s really unpleasant. It looks awful, stains clothes and ruins furniture. The spores of black mould can cause health problems; even touching it can provoke an allergic reaction.

Sometimes it’s not enough to wrap up warm. My daughter and her friends, in their new basement flat by the river, were faced with electric storage heaters. Not certain how they worked, and alarmed at the cost, they didn’t use them. Well insulated, the flat wasn’t particularly cold, but by December their walls and furniture were covered in mould!

black mould

You can search online for instructions if your new home has an unfamiliar heating system. If you’ve got a problem with damp, here’s a few tips…

If you have an empty room which you’re not heating, keep the door closed. Steam from the bathroom and kitchen doesn’t stay there, but wanders through the house looking for a cold surface to condense on. Move the furniture away from outside walls, and check behind it regularly. Narrow gaps and poor air circulation encourage mould; open the windows on sunny winter days.

After a shower, close the bathroom door and open a window, if you have one; let the water vapour escape. Otherwise, use extractor fans. They’re usually under 30 watts, so cheap to run. Make sure your tumble drier is vented to the outside.

Do you have a loft? If you go into the roof space, having found out about safety precautions first, there’s often a gap where the end of the roof meets the floor. Sometimes you can even see daylight through it. This gap is crucial to the overall ventilation of many houses. If it’s blocked by insulating material, you may get a problem with damp.

There’s lots more useful advice on the internet. Don’t just live with a dangerous condition like damp; do some research and find out what you can do about it!

People used to interact with their homes far more than many do today. Learn about yours – where does the power comes from, where does the water go? What’s your score in the Housing section of the Resilience Handbook? Which action should you do next?

Remember the free assessment PDF can be found at the end of the Learning Resilience page on this site.

Advertisement

Storing Water

Disaster planning, resilience, resilient communities, , ,

Some European countries are advising people to stockpile a minimum amount of water and food in case of emergencies. This certainly makes good sense in a rural area like Somerset. Our civil contingency plans recommend looking at two weeks’ supplies before normal services can be resumed, in a general worst case scenario.

We’ve had the mains water cut off before. If you’ve got enough bottled water to last a whole fortnight, it’d be easy to cope for a day or so. Where could you keep it? Any dark place will do – under the stairs, in the loft, out in a shed. Be careful in a loft as the floor is not safe to walk on, nor strong enough to hold full water containers. You’ll have to put planks across the rafters.

The five litre (gallon) bottles are the best ones to keep. The empty containers will be useful if the authorities bring a bowser or outside tap. Ideally you should have two litres of drinking water per person per day. For a fortnight, seven of these large bottles each will do.

This is quite a lot of storage for a family of four! If you simply haven’t the space for a full supply, keep a couple of the 25 litres (5 gallon) plastic water containers as well, such as people use on caravan holidays. Store them dry and empty; keep a bit of hose and a funnel with them as they’re hard to fill up from a sink tap. You’ll probably get some warning if the mains supply is going to fail, so you can get these full before it does.

a selection of water containers for an emergency

Make sure your bath plug fits and fill this up too. Extra water for washing would be nice! Remember full baths can be dangerous for small children. Add a couple of buckets and a large jug to your list and you have an excellent emergency kit to cope with quite a long interruption of mains water supplies.

For more information about emergency planning and community resilience, read ‘The Resilience Handbook – How to survive in the 21st century’

Diary October 2015

events, Food, gardening, North England, resilient communities, travel, Wales, , , ,

The Resilience Handbook has been out in print for a busy two months now. Distributing and promoting has taken up most of my time – learning to sell books from a standing start! I’m just about to go on tour, heading north through the scary urbanisation of the Midlands to Hebden Bridge for the Food Sovereignty gathering.

poster for Food Sovereignty

I’m planning to stay on and revisit the wonderful people at Incredible Edible Todmorden nearby – I hear their aquaculture project is thriving. Then, taking the North Wales Expressway which I hear so much about on the traffic news, off to explore Welsh bookshops ending up with a visit to the Centre for Alternative Technology at Machynlleth. I hope the weather holds!

No wonder we obsess about the weather in Britain. I’ve had to pack for wet cold, dry cold, unseasonable warmth and days of torrential rain. I could get all or none of these during a ten day walkabout! I’m afraid I drew the line at taking a spade to dig myself out of snowdrifts, as my neighbour advised, though that may turn out to be a false economy.

Packing wasn’t the only weather challenge this autumn. There were two weeks of cold wet weather at the end of August. My optimistic crops of sweetcorn and chickpeas went mouldy where they stood. The slugs multiplied alarmingly, not even bothering to crawl into hiding during the long wet days.

Once things dried out somewhat, I had to clear up the wreckage and deal with Mollusc World Domination. I replaced the stone slab garden bed paths with oven shelves and bits of fireguard; metal grids providing no shelter for them, nor for Ant City. I’m normally quite tolerant of ants, but this year they managed to destroy an entire courgette crop and most of the broad beans with their bug farms. Chemical warfare, however, is just not on the agenda.

The elderberry harvest in early September was upset by this weather; it took far more trips to collect enough for the crucial anti-flu syrup and we may not have a full winter’s supply. Elder trees can exert a great deal of influence over their flowers. They will hold them back as buds during rainy days, then open them like sudden umbrellas as soon as the sun comes out. Much the same applies to their berry clusters.

My friend’s bees didn’t produce enough honey to see themselves over the winter, so they will have to be fed by humans. I don’t know if this was the weather. Perhaps they are on strike against pesticides.

Right. Departure delayed to let the high winds abate, but not for too long or I’ll get entangled in Rush Hour. I just have to check out Knit for the Planet – who are the Woolly Angels? – and pack some wool….

The Methane Saga

crafts, resilience, resilient communities, writing, ,

The Methane Saga

or

The Production of Methane Gas Described in the British Style of Finnish Epic Poetry

I was listening to a recording of the Kalevala, the Finnish epic poem, while crocheting. These tales were created to be spoken or sung, and I was struck by the way they harmonised with repetitive creative tasks.  One is busy but relaxed; it can be dull without listening to something entertaining.  Hence the popularity of knitting circles.

Imagine an extended family in a snow bound yurt dwelling.  After months together, interesting subjects for conversation may be limited.  How to amuse oneself while making socks or whittling knife handles?

“Tell us a story, Grandparent” comes the call.  Arthritic hands are no longer nimble enough to join in the tasks, but a fireside place is welcome.  And so it begins….

Tales created to be spoken communicate in different ways to those designed for the written word.  If you weren’t paying attention, you can’t turn the page back.  Listening to the Kalevala, I found that momentary focus on my work meant I lost a few lines, but not the gist of the plot.  Even if I had missed some crucial words, important concepts are repeated several times, key events padded out with description.

The ‘Hiawatha’ rhythm in which English translations of these poems are recited seems to bear little relation to the singing of the original.  There’s a sample of this on Wikipedia.  My musings on the ancient origins of epic poems may be mere fiction.

However, author Lewis Dartnell has speculated at length in ‘The Knowledge – How to Rebuild our World from Scratch’ on how we can preserve important scientific discoveries in the event of global catastrophe.  This style of telling seems well adapted to embed this information.  It falls into memory as if it were designed to, and the redundancy guards against attrition.

In the post-apocalyptic landscape, you can bet people will have to knit socks, possibly in a yurtish sort of dwelling. So I wrote the ‘ The Production of Methane Gas Described in the British Style of Finnish Epic Poetry ‘. It’s very long, a good sock’s worth to a fast knitter, so it’s on its own page. I’ll be checking the technical details with the biochar people, but as the epic points out ‘ And with care prevent explosion’!

The Resilience Handbook will be out soon!!

You can place advance orders here

Diary May 2015

events, Resilience Handbook, transport, writing, , , ,

This month was something of a landmark as I finally parted with the Leyland Pilot post office van which served me as a mobile HQ during my event organiser days. I gave it to a young crew member, who will have ample opportunity to learn welding on it.

The nucleus of crafters formed during the Free Craft Workshops project are determined to continue some form of meeting. Instead of competing for custom, crafters should unite to reclaim the market for basic household goods. Supporting local businesses needs to become a much larger factor in consumer choices.

Remember, the more local materials are in place, the more resilient an area is.

Following a Resilience Plan isn’t all knitting and gardening. It sends you on adventures too. This month, I went on a day sail on a tall ship as my challenge for Water. The Handbook explains these things in more detail.

The Lord Nelson is part of the Jubilee Sailing Trust, who offer adventure holidays for the disabled. I was very impressed with the adaptations – even a wheelchair lift! – and the excellent crew. Not many people could cross the Atlantic in a three masted sailing ship, yet display such patience and consideration for novices.

I chickened out of climbing the rigging, even though the little old lady volunteer helper assured me it wasn’t as hard as it looked. Steering was more my thing, and I successfully navigated the 400 ton vessel around a lobster pot on the way back in to harbour.

Back to work, with a trip to Hay-on-Wye, where the Book Festival was in full swing. I haven’t been there since the first one back in the late Eighties; it has changed a bit since then!  Accommodation was scarce in Hay itself but a regular shuttle bus ran from Hereford, where I stayed at the excellent Somerville House.

It was fascinating to be among hundreds of people all carrying books, reading while they drank coffee or waited in the queue to hear their favourite author give a talk. I had my eye on getting a signed copy of a Neil Gaiman or David Mitchell book, but the shelves were stripped of these by Friday morning!

I did pick up a copy of the ‘Civil Defense Manual’ from 1950, of which more later.

And so home again, back to the office and the to-do list.

Diary, December 2014

crafts, Food, resilience, Resilience Handbook, Resilience Plan, writing, , ,

The Resilience Garden glitters with frost, which should finally put a stop to the ravages of slug and snail. The September rocket sowing bolted due to the warm weather, a November replacement sprang up with enthusiasm but then settled down to wait out the winter as seedlings, and the molluscs ate most of the spinach.

Feeding the leeks has worked, though.

Waiting for a book to get published is an arduous task. I’m using the time to develop my own Resilience Plan some more.

This has involved me in adventures with an anti mould paint based on calcium hydroxide. The resilience pioneer can study the manufacture of this and other basic chemicals in The Knowledge. Use your Xmas tokens. It’s a good ‘man book’.

I’ll be appearing on The Knowledge website as a guest writer in the New Year, covering some of the amazing projects I’ve found on my travels!

Meanwhile, I’ve been designing learning modules to go with the Resilience Handbook, exploring more strange landscapes, repainting the house….

…and working with CREW HQ to organise a series of free craft workshops next year!

These will be held fortnightly on Sunday afternoons at the Red Brick Building between Glastonbury and Street, in Somerset. The first one is to be on February 15th. We’ve been part-funded by Aster Communities, and about thirty local craftspeople signed up at the Frost Fair last month.

Traditional crafts are going to be demonstrated and visitors can learn some simple techniques on the day. You can learn to fix things, get advice on your own projects, and generally network with skilled artisans. If you’d like to talk about a Repair Cafe, starting or joining a community crafts group, building a career as a craftsperson or anything like that, do come along.

I’ll be there teaching resilience. How resilient are you now? Why are practical skills important? Try out the questionnaire and design your plan.

Best Wishes for the New Year!

New ways of thinking

economics, resilience,

A statement with very important implications and data back up

“The irregularity of investment returns stirs up wealth differences while transactions of all types between people tend to wipe them out.”

and a confrontational rant

” Don’t pretend you’re too far out the system to vote and then get your food from a supermarket. The word for that is ‘hypocrite’ not ‘rebel’ ”

Which got more response?

Which needs to get more response?

Community Resilience and Emergency Welfare Newsletter

business, resilience, , ,

C.R.E.W are borrowing space here to post their steward newsletter until they can sort out a new website; however this coincides with some exciting changes in their organisation…

“Hi to all our loyal and fabulous volunteers!

Wishing you all a merry festive season!

We have rather suddenly got a new email address crewcic@gmail.com since the locally based Ergonet hosting company went bust – please direct all stewarding enquiries here for the moment and we will let you know if this changes. They wouldn’t let us send out this newsletter.

We’re seeking funding for a new website, which will come with a proper email address.

We’ve now become a Community Interest Company so that we can develop more of our resilience courses and practical skills camps. We’ll still be running stewards at One Love next summer, but not the Green Gathering. However, we are recruiting people for traffic management at the Langport Scythe Fair in June, and are looking for small event work especially in Somerset.

For next year, we’re planning low cost resilience training courses in France, the opportunity to meet up at an established camp and various hands-on craft events, among other things. We’ll send out a more detailed newsletter in the New Year.

As we are now a proper company we are building up a stock of useful items and local craftworks for sale to raise money for providing training in all aspects of resilience. For example….

Candle stove (as seen on Facebook except this one has been researched and tested for the past year)

 new design 72ppi

 The key features are the stainless steel core and the metal stand, which we can supply for £25 (Stand £20, core £7.50 sold separately) with full instructions.  Contact the temporary gmail address above for details

 new stand and core 72ppi

Resilience Handbook a 32 page A5 booklet with the basic outlines of the Resilience Wheel concept, as seen on our now vanished website, which is £3

Both items are post free to our volunteer community!

Our Facebook friend page CREW HQ regularly posts interesting and useful ideas around resilience and sustainability, please do join us there!

Cheers

Jane & Helene (Directors)

Linden (Secretary)

Linda (Consultant)

Simon (Marketing)”